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‘Sesame Street’ Introduces Ji-Young, Its First-Ever Asian American Muppet
By Alexa Heah, 16 Nov 2021
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Image via Seasame Workshop
Ji-Young, the newest member of Sesame Street, is making history as the show’s first-ever Asian American muppet. The seven-year-old will make her first appearance in See Us Coming Together: A Sesame Street Special, which will air on Thanksgiving Day. Other celebrities of Asian heritage, such as Simu Liu, Padma Lakshmi, and Naomi Osaka, will star alongside her in the special.
Interestingly, the iconic street’s latest resident seemed destined to be a part of the cast. She explained: “So, in Korean, traditionally the two syllables [in a name] each mean something different. And Ji means, like, smart or wise. Young means, like, brave or courageous and strong. But we were looking it up and guess what? Ji also means sesame.”
According to AP News, part of Ji-Young’s loveable personality can be traced back to her puppeteer, Kathleen Kim. The 41-year-old Korean American was first accepted into a Sesame Street workshop in 2014, before officially joining the team the following year. Now, she has the chance to create the narrative surrounding the program’s first Asian American resident, which undoubtedly feels like a large responsibility.
“I feel like I have a lot of weight that maybe I’m putting on myself to teach these lessons and to be this representative that I did not have as a kid,” Kim said.
But as Leslie Carrara-Rudolph, a fellow puppeteer who plays Abby Cadabby, reminded her: “It’s not about us… It’s about this message.”
Kay Wilson Stallings, Executive Vice-President of Creative and Production for Sesame Workshop, the nonprofit behind Sesame Street, revealed that Ji-Young’s introduction was borne out of lengthy discussions following the harrowing events of 2020, including George Floyd’s death and anti-Asian hate attacks around the US.
The workshop’s two task forces, one reviewing the show’s content and the other its diversity, came up with Coming Together, a multi-year initiative that aims to address how we teach children about ethnicity, race, and culture. This resulted in the addition of other muppets, such as eight-year-old Tamir, who was one of the first muppets to speak out on racism.
“When we knew we were going to be doing this work that was going to focus on the Asian and Pacific Islanders experience, we of course knew we needed to create an Asian muppet as well,” explained Stallings.
In order to ensure these new muppets were true to their roots, Sesame Workshop engaged external experts, as well as a “culture trust” of internal employees, to give feedback on every aspect of the characters. For example, Kim felt strongly that Ji-Young should not appear “generically pan-Asian.”
“Because that’s something that all Asian Americans have experienced. They kind of want to lump us into this monolithic ‘Asian.’ So it was very important that she was specifically Korean American, not just like, generically Korean, but she was born here,” Kim remarked.
Apart from showing off her hobbies of playing the electric guitar and skateboarding, Ji-Young will be tasked to teach children how to be an “upstander,” a term first coined on the show’s special, which featured Tamir, last year.
“Being an upstander means you point out things that are wrong or something that someone does or says that is based on their negative attitude towards the person because of the color of their skin, or the language they speak, or where they’re from,” Stallings said.
“We want our audience to understand they can be upstanders.”
Not only will Ji-Young feature in the upcoming Thanksgiving special, but she will also be present throughout Sesame Street’s 53rd season in 2022. Stalling assured the audience she wouldn’t just be used to address racial injustice and will play a part in the show’s various live-action and animated programs.
[via AP News, cover image via Seasame Workshop]
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